A life alone in her cell but not a moment of privacy

Kathleen Folbigg may spend the rest of her life in jail - alone. Photo: Simon Alekna

Kathleen Folbigg is facing a life as the loneliest woman in NSW.

Awaiting a possible natural-life sentence for killing her four infant children, Folbigg will remain in Mulawa women's prison isolated from other inmates who regard child killers as the lowest form of life.

"She is not a person we would take a chance with," said the head of women's prisons in NSW, Lee Downes.

"The nature of the offence means she would be forever separate. Her social contact is with staff, uniformed and non-uniformed, and I guess she will always be housed separately.

"We will assess if she can have limited contact with other women down the track, but it is a day by day, month by month case with anybody who has been so public, who has allegedly committed a crime other inmates take a set against."

Folbigg, 36, spends 22 hours each day in a solitary cell under camera surveillance or half-hourly checks by prison guards.

The remaining two hours out of her cell are spent alone - "an experience of isolation that will lead to a numbing of her social expressions, loss of social skills, isolation, depression and paranoia", forensic psychiatrist Bruce Westmore said.

In a sentencing submission on Friday, Dr Westmore told the NSW Supreme Court Folbigg had an unclassifiable personality disorder brought on from her mistreatment as a child.

Ms Downes said if Folbigg were to receive a natural-life sentence, like fellow high-profile Mulawa prisoner Katherine Knight, who skinned her husband and cooked his head in a pot, she would inevitably become "institutionalised".

"Prisoners have different reactions," Ms Downes said. "Some hit the law books and study for their appeal, some say 'what's the point?'. Sometimes people go a bit mad. They get mental illness as a result of going to jail, or it worsens the mental illness they had.

"If someone sat around in the same place for 20, 30, 40 years they would go brain dead."

Dr Westmore said that because Folbigg's personality disorder stemmed from incidents very early in her life, the "pessimistic prognosis" was that it was impossible to treat.

Folbigg's diaries, which played a key role in her conviction, showed a consistent and pervasive depression.

He said her feelings of isolation, abandonment and inadequacy translated into anger, which she took out on the children.

The court heard Folbigg had suffered physical, emotional and possibly sexual abuse in the first three years of her life.

Her behaviour regressed so much that at the time it was feared she was retarded.

Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, said that after Folbigg's father murdered her mother when Folbigg was 18 months old, she was placed with an aunt and uncle and acted in an inappropriate manner that demonstrated a "profound disturbance".

It was not until she was placed with a foster family that her behaviour eventually became normal.

Ms Downes, who has been governor of Mulawa, Emu Plains, Grafton and Parklea jails, said the majority of the 500 women incarcerated in NSW were "victims of sexual assault, incest, domestic violence, have witnessed physical abuse, you name it".

"As adults they get the same again, and when they come into jail we have a whole range of security procedures which unfortunately bring back these experiences."

While MS Downes has instituted job and education programs to humanise and rehabilitate women prisoners, she said Folbigg's necessary isolation would preclude her from working alongside others.

Folbigg's defence counsel Peter Zahra, SC, said because of the effects of serving her sentence in isolation she should receive a determinate sentence rather than life. By the time she was released she would not be able to have children.